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11 October 2004
Death is less harsh in the simple present
Last night Christopher Reeve passed away. He was 52 years old and was suffering from ailments consequent to his ghastly accident in 1995. Keith Miller, an Australian cricketing legend also died yesterday at 84.The print media given its space constraints, particularly on the front page where the focus is on cramming as many news items as possible with links to their continuations in the subsequent pages if they should so interest the reader, likes to make its death announcements as curtly as it can. The wording of a headline for a death announcement usually depends on how important or recognised the individual was. For the purposes of my argument I shall leave out cases of present or former heads of state passing away for these would dominate the front page. When the personality however has peripheral significance such as a connection to the arts and entertainment world or the sports world more often than not he will garner at best a sidebox with a picture that readers will easily associate him with. The important segments to a death announcement headline are the name of the celebrity, cause for his renown, his age and most significantly the form of announcing his death. Take for instance the front page of tomorrow's Hindu. Christopher Reeve's death is announced as "'Superman' passes away" while Keith Miller's death is announced as "Keith Miller dead". While each had his undisputed moments of glory and fame, not surprisingly Reeve's meeting with the Queen is especially highlighted by the BBC, in spheres of time, space and influence as disparate as possible the copy editors at The Hindu saw it fit to announce Reeve's death in the benign simple present tense and further mitigating the shock and tragedy the news could cause by referring to it with so gentle a verb as "passes away" but give Keith Miller the short shrift with a brutally cold telegram headline: "Keith Miller dead".
It has intrigued me as to what forms of sentences are used to announce deaths of different personalities. Having grown up with the bland, unsentimental Hindu and what was in the 90s a yearling Deccan Herald barely aware of its mantle as the local newspaper of a city soon to acquire a verb after it, I observed that there was no preference for one over the other. There were healthy doses of empathising announcements for nominally important figures and unconcerned, disaffected shrugs for legends. I have to ask however if one form should not be preferred over the other. It would grieve me deeply to see a headline that said "Mother Teresa dead" and anguish me altogether to see "Dawood Ibrahim passes away". Here then is my rule of thumb: reserve the former for thugs, bandits, politicians, MPs and MLAs from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, anybody from the CPI and its Marxist paradox and the latter for everybody else, but in particular men and women that gave us cause to savour life and those for whom death was indeed a natural phase to pass into. Meaning no disrespect to the deceased, I did find somebody who did not think much of Christopher Reeve, dead or alive.
